One in three

I have to admit I'm strangely, uncharacteristically fascinated by the royal engagement. Normally my interest in the royal family is limited at the best of times - probably largely due to sheer rage at the Daily Express crowd.

HRH hit the scene in my second year at St Andrews and the atmosphere there changed dramatically. Suddenly, the nicest bars in town (and it's a small old town) were packed with expensively-highlighted American girls in fitted rugby shirts and pink pashminas, while security was tightened to within an inch of its life. Woe betide the student who tried to get into the Union (or even the library) on a Friday night without an ID card. After second year, he moved out of halls and the hoo-hah died down a bit. Or maybe it's just that I moved to France for a year, returned briefly for the first semester of third year and then absconded to Italy for spaghetti, spritz and snowboarding. I definitely passed WW a couple of times on the street but couldn't distinguish him from the other posh boys wearing navy baseball caps over floppy blond hair. At least until someone hissed - 'but wasn't that...???', forcing me to admit my ignorance. My sub-standard celebrity spotting skills make me glad I'm not a gossip columnist.

But what interests me isn't the romance, or the dress, or the media circus, or even KM's lack of career (these days, who's really managed to achieve anything by 28? I certainly hadn't got very far). It's the reality. It's hard for a relationship to survive the first tough years after graduation. They've been together eight years. What keeps two fast-changing young people together that long, throughout their turbulent early twenties? How did they cope with separation? Why did they split and what brought them back together? Are they really 'in love' or just good mates who fancy each other and get on ok? What does in love mean after eight years? Is the spark still there?

They both seem so modern and normal - insofar as a prince and the daughter of millionaires can be. They look and sound just like the other posh boys and girls I know. What makes their relationship a success? Do they have a real bond or is it just PR?

One in three St Andrews graduates marries another St Andrews graduate. A sign of a small, inbred community or of salt-soaked romance on the bracing Fife coast?

By all appearances, this is not a whirlwind romance, but a tough, tried-and-tested bond, with the battlescars and laughter lines of eight years to prove it. Does this mean there's some hope for the rest of us?

Gloom

I know there's a fair amount of melancholy on these pages but really, it's not too bad and most of it is all in the name of comedy anyway. No, really my default setting is 'life's not that brilliant but - ooh look over there at the pretty sunshine!' Not so much positive thinking, more enjoying the distractions as they come.

Work is not always brilliant but then again I only started out a year ago, so logically things must still be on an upward curve. As for la vie sentimentale, well, the only way is up really. I mean, it certainly can't get any worse. So the future at least has potential.

However when I'm back in the UK I'm beset with doom-mongering on all sides. This is not helped by the old copies of the Daily Express lying in headline-screaming piles all around my parents' house. There's something about the British press that is peculiarly, sensationally pessimistic.

The latest one is that within ten years the entire Thames valley will have flooded and London and much of Kent will be under water. Now I know this is a fairly standard 'effects of global warming' scenario, but surely if a submerged City were a mere ten years away the financial industry would already have started moving out of... oh wait a minute.

When I'm in Brussels or Kraków, my outlook is relatively (and I mean relatively) sunny, but when I come back to the UK, I suddenly become convinced that I have no chance of getting a pension or health insurance, I'll be living in a bedsit for the rest of my life and my dotage will be spent rocking spasmodically in a corner of the orange-painted EasyNursingHome or - worse still - my arthritic fingers piecing together components in a European-outsourced Chinese munitions factory.

If only it would stop raining.

Mid-holiday challenge: what's the worst apocalytic scenario you can find in a British tabloid today? Answers on a postcard (or in the comments box) please...

Freedom of speech

Interesting times. Tonight, Nick Griffin of the BNP is a guest on BBC1's Question Time, and - since I have the lovely lovely BBC at home - I'm staying up to watch. I'm getting out the beer and popcorn.
OK, no popcorn.

Now, for non-Brits, the BNP tends to swing to the right somewhat, with rather less-than-friendly policies on immigrants and an inconvenient habit of denying the Holocaust.

This is all very exciting. There have been protests all day. They even broke into the BBC. There are previews on the BBC news as we speak and people are even booing him on. Excellent.
Protesters have complained that it's equivalent to putting Hitler on TV.

Now hang on a minute.

The very fact that people are breaking into the BBC, the fact that there is so much protest, so much news coverage, surely shows that this is absolutely nothing of the sort. We are well aware of what the BNP represents, we have a vague idea of Nick Griffin's policies (well... at least regarding immigration) and we are treating him with the necessary caution. Yes, Britain has been racked by recession, but that doesn't mean we're looking for an extremist to beat us into an economically-successful future. We're letting a known extremist speak on the television, but we know what we're letting ourselves in for. People, the press, public figures are talking about it: the debate is open, and a jolly good thing too.

Let's not forget that we are talking about an elected party: the BNP - however wrong or right this may be - do have seats in the European Parliament (*shudders*). As such, we need a platform to interrogate them. Question Time is not for the faint-hearted: excerpts are flashing past on the news at the moment and let me tell you it's no picnic. He's not in an enviable position.
And quite right too: politicians should be held to account. I'm curious: I want to know whether what I've heard about the BNP is correct - and what their other policies might be.

So I'm glad this guy is going to be on the TV tonight. I know it's much easier to trot out that tired old Voltaire line than actually to look at free speech and decide where to draw a line before the truly unacceptable but nonetheless I stick by it.

Apart from anything else, it should be good entertainment value.

As an aside, the one thing that concerns me is that ordinary middle-class, Daily Express-reading Brits like my parents may listen and say - you know what, his other policies are actually pretty reasonable...

... and that I think is where the danger lies.